[demonrail666]

Part 2/5

WHAT REALLY WENT ON THERE ? WE ONLY HAVE THIS EXCERPT

NME Do you think it's accurate to describe the three of you as outsiders?

NC "I think we have all tended to create some kind of area where we can work without particularly having to worry about what's fashionable."
MES "Yes, fair enough. But I think there's a lot of differences in this trio here. Nick was very rock'n'roll to me but he's turned his back on it which was cool. Shane's more, I dunno. To me the Pogues are the good bits from the Irish showband scene, like the Indians. You had that feel, probably lst that now. Your work's good though."
SM "Fuck it man. Who wants to work in a place where there's all these people looking at you ?"
MES "Are you talking about your gigs ? You should stop doing them, then."
SM "Can't afford to."
MES "Fuck it, you could fight not to if you don't like it."
SM "...and leave the rest of them in the lurch ?"
MES "Nah, the rest of your band will always complain about not working. If you're paying them a wage tell them to stay at home and behave themselves."
SM "It's a democracy our band."
MES "Why aren't they here with you then ?"
SM "Cos the NME didn't want to interview them."
MES 'Cos nobody'd recognise them."
SM "That's it ! They want to interview us because we've got distinctive characteristics. They just want to interview three high-brow loonies."
MES "In that case you should have brought your mate Joe Strummer along."
SM "I said high-brow loonies."

HITS AND MYTHS

NME You must be aware that, consciously or otherwise, you've each created a particular myth that has arisen, in part, from your songs.
SM "Nobody created my mythology, I certainly didn't."
NC "No, you (the press) created it."

SM "The media has a lot to answer for, you're all a bunch of bastards however friendly you are."
NC "Let's not talk about the media. Why the hell are you talking about mythologies ? That tends to suggest it's somehow unreal."
SM "It seems to me that in your songs, Nick, you're doing a Jung-style trip of examining your shadow, all the dark things you don't want to be. A lot of your songs are like trips into the subconscious and are therefore nightmarish."
NC "Possibly."
SM "You're exploring the world through the subconscious. I've done that on occasions for various reasons, whether it be illness or self abuse, or whatever. Once things start to look grotesque I don't write them or sing them. I couldn't write them the way you do, I couldn't-making nightmares into living daylight..."
NC "I think you do a pretty good job of it in some of your songs."
SM "The minute it gets dark I shoot back, retreat. I haven;'t always but I do now 'cos..."
MES "Don't give too much away Shane, don't tell them. Hold a bit back."
SM "I haven't told them anything yet."
NME "How do each of you approach the actual mechanics of songwriting ?"

MES "When you ask that you induce fear in a songwriter. I just go blank."
NC "It's not a cut and dried process."
SM "For a start I've got to be out of my head to write. For a lot of the time it's automatic writing. 'Rainy day in Soho' was automatic."
MES "Its gotta be subconscious and off the wall. He says he's got to be out of his head, and a lot of the time I have too. Sometimes, I just wake up and do it. It's one of the hardest questions you ever get asked. For instance, you sometimes hear things that would make a great idea for a song but you never carry them out."
SM "I do. Like the "Turkish Song of the Damned" was a Kraut trying to tell me something and I misheard him. He said, "Have you heard 'The Turkish Song' by the Damned". Then I woke up.
MES "My German song's better than your yours, I bet. This is like one of those night-time discussions on Channel 4."
NC "I writesongs in batches then record them and then can't write again for ages. I try and build one song upon another, they may not look obviously inter-related but often one song acts as a springboard into another."
SM "You haven't been back to the swamps for a while, have you ?"
NC "The swamps ? Heh,heh. I've written a novel about that."
MES "Nick thinks a novel's two pages long. Very novel, heh, heh."
NC "What's it called ?"
MES "It's called 'It'll Be Ready in Another Five Years'. You should write more aggressive songs, Nick, you're getting too slow."
NC "I haven't sat down and thought about the mood befoe I wrote them."
MES "I find your work almost English Lit oriented, like Beckett, things crop up again and again."
NC "And your songs are very deceptive Mark, in the way they're sung. They might appear at times like streams of consciousness but that's deceptive."
MES "One thing that eally annoys me is that stream of consciousness thing. I wouldn't let on to it normally, but it annoys the shit out of me. I put a lot of hard sweat into them, I think about them. They have an inner logic to me so I don't really care who understands them or not. I see writing and singing as two very different things. My attitude is if you can't deliver it like a garage band, fuck it. That's one thing that's never been explored, delivering complex things in a very straightforward rock'n'roll way. My old excuse is if I'd wanted to be a poet, I'd have been a poet."
SM "And starved."
MES "I can write, boy, I can write. That's what I do. People like you sit around moaning about the state of pop music...The trouble is it's too bloody easy for people, that's why music is in the sorry state it is. Any idiot, actors mainly, can go in there, sing a chord, bang on a machine...I'm not objecting to that but when people get at me for trying to say something in a rock'n'roll mode it's as if I'm a freak."
SM "All this talk about the state of music, rock'n'roll, Irish music, soul, funk."
MES "Salsa."
SM "Its been proved by Acid House that anyone can make a record."
MES "We're not thick, we all know that."
SM "Look, I'm talking about the implications of Acid House"
MES "There's nothing new in Acid House for me, pal. I've been using that process for years. Bloody years. It might be new for you but don't assume it's new for anyone else, because you're fucking wrong, pal.
SM "What the fuck are you talking about ? Have you made an Acid House record ?
MES "It's the same process, right. Have you had some sort of bloody revelation about Acid House ?"
SM "Hah ! It's obvious if you listen they put Eastern melodies over it, bits of this nad that..."
MES "That's what music should always have been like."
SM "It always was."
MES "Why haven't you been doing it for years then pal ?"
NC "I think they have been doing it. I've heard zithers and so on. Eastern stuff and Turkish stuff."
MES "We had jazz arrangements in '82 when the rest of those tossers were playing cocktail lounge music and fucking pseudo new wave, so don't talk to me about it because I know what I'm talking about pal."
SM "Fucking hell, what's he on about ?"